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Popular song from Brazil, unknown composer.
Janaina is the name.
I made the arrangements and recorded all instruments and voice.
This was a very interesting exercise as trying to stick as much as possible to the original melody was a challenge. The questions is: what’s the original melody? Found one or two records of the song and went to my childhood memories to find it out.
Instruments recorded:
– 3 berimbaus: gunga, médio and viola
– xequerê africano
– pandeiro
– cuíca
– 2 guitars: 6 and 7 strings, all acoustic, nylon guitars

Sometime ago, I’ve recorded few baselines for Choro, which I consider very important for guitar players as well as for other musicians to understand what the guitar is playing and fill in with the other instruments.

So the first video of the series was the introduction to the song Brejeiro, from Ernesto Nazareth.

It is very important to practice “soft skills” in music. Ear Training is probably one of the key aspects of the music studies very commonly overlooked by most of the people.

Why should you invest your precious time in Ear Training? Very simple, you will become a better musician.

There’s no rocket science here. EarTraining means you can sing notes before you play, you can identify the type of chords (major, minor, dominant, augmented, etc), intervals, scales and etc.

There are several ways to practice that. Technology came to help us and you can find many software and applications.

My preferred one is Ear Master as it simply combines everything in a nice iPad app, with all the functionalities I need. The additional benefits of using a software like that one for music is the fact you get all analytics, progress development and statistics. You can compare your evolution and define goals. And as a side effect, you have it on the go, as it is installed the tablet as well as in your notebook or desktop. All synchronized, so whatever you have completed in one device is already updated everywhere.

Life is getting easier for guitar, piano, flute, clarinet students. And not only them, for all musicians, all instruments. Excuses to not to study are getting over and over. So roll your leaves on and get your Ear Training studies up to speed!

I’ve entered in the world of online education. It fits quite well to my unorganized profile: spending several weeks waking up early having a structured life and on the other hand, some other weeks studying and composing in the middle of the night. From what I see, my musician friends are not very different. To be honest, my guitar doesn’t even sound properly in the morning!

Back to the topic, I’ve been listening quite a log about online education. I’ve never dared to try out. To make life even easier, there are several free courses. Indeed, free. With internet connection, wherever you are, you learn. The classic saying “you don’t learn if you don’t want to” becomes even more real.

Cai Cai Balão
Pedro’s first time in the studio, recording :-), just before he turns 4 years old. And at the end you can hear Nara’s special participation saying “papai”
Voice: Pedro Harati
Guitars: Abdallah Harati